The game of poker is a multiplayer game, generally accommodating, for example, a minimum of four and a maximum of between eight and ten players. During the game players make wagers which are accumulated in a single pool (“the pot”). Once the wagering stages of the game have been completed, the players who remain in the game reveal the playing cards in their hands. The hands are ranked, and the player with the highest-ranking hand wins the pot.
The game of poker is a zero-sum game insofar as, in each turn of the game, a gain of the winner is equal to accumulated losses of the other players in the game. However, a party who arranges or hosts a game of poker may levy a commission (“a rake”) on the players or on the pot in order to obtain revenue. Further examples of such multiplayer zero-sum games are backgammon, bridge, gin rummy, canasta, whist or mah-jong.
A system and method for playing zero-sum games, such as poker, over a computer network is described in published PCT Application WO 03/093921 A2, published 13 Nov. 2003, which is assigned to the assignee of the present invention. The entire contents of WO 03/093921 A2 are incorporated by reference herein. The system of the '921 PCT publication includes a central gaming server accessible over the Internet and enables participation in games such as poker games by individuals accessing diverse portal websites (poker websites).
In the last several years, systems have been commercialised such as that described in the '921 patent publication wherein a gaming website provides a facility for online game playing, particularly online poker playing. Such systems have become popular and, gaming sites may host hundreds, even thousands of players at a time.
In online poker, the success of an online poker website (“virtual poker room”) is directly related to the magnitude of a pool of would-be players who desire to play a game of online poker. Simply put, the larger the pool of players (i.e. the “liquidity”), the more poker games (i.e. virtual poker tables each accommodating a maximum of, say, eight players) the system can spawn, thereby increasing its attractiveness to other would-be players. In particular, a player may join in a virtual poker game at which an unoccupied playing position, or vacancy, exists. If a virtual poker game has no vacancies available, a would-be player may have to wait a considerable time before a vacant playing position becomes available, allowing the player to join the game, which may cause frustration and which may cause the would-be player to leave the gaming website. Conversely, a would-be player may also have to wait for a considerable period before a sufficient number of other would-be players become available to establish a poker game and to enable play to commence, which can also cause frustration and lead to player attrition. Increased liquidity is generally attractive to would-be players.
In order to maximise this size advantage, some online poker rooms operate under a centralised topology, in which there is a single operating entity (“operator”) that owns and runs the gaming website and the player pool is homogeneous (i.e. all players are registered with, or “belong to”, this single operator). The operator makes money by charging a rake on the accumulated pot in each game of poker that is played in the online poker room. Under a centralised topology, a player will always be playing only with other players who are registered with the same (i.e. the only) operator. Settlement of player wagers is straightforward: 1) the operator deducts its rake from the pot; 2) the balance of the pot is paid over to the player that has won the game; and 3) the next game starts and the process repeats.
Other online poker rooms may operate under a distributed topology (also referred to, in the art, as a network topology). Under this topology, the player pool is heterogeneous, as players registered with different, possibly competing, operators are pooled together to maximise liquidity of the collective player pool, as previously discussed. This means that players registered with different operators could find themselves playing in the same poker game. In this instance, settlement of player wagers is more complex than in the centralised topology, as situations invariably arise in which funds have to be transferred, (or “cleared”) between different operators whose players are playing under a distributed topology. The principles underlying a distributed topology are set forth in the above-referenced patent application WO 03/093921 A2.